WanderingHero wrote:The new version of Start of Retaliation was far more manageable thanks, though I noticed you removed the death knight event (either intentionally or unintentionally) while still leaving the dialogue in.... that seems a bit strange.

I didn't remove the death knight event. What happened while playing? Did the death knight didn't spawn at all or he didn't change his side & started recruiting on reaching a keep? Can you please post a replay?

The final Scenario works flavour wise but drags on much too. I'd recommend less gold and maybe less income for all sides (Malifor included). I played it for around 2 hours and while I was winning slowly and had built up over 900 reserve gold, i felt disheartened when I FINALLY killed one of the enemy leaders, only to have the others suddenly start spawning a crazy amount of troops. And even before then it was kind of a drag with the long check point bit. It wasn't even challenging, just excessively long and repetitive. ended up debuging to the Epilogue.

Yeah, its a bit of repetition right. But here the difficult part is not the beginning (where you can have a good defensive advantage, thanks to the small entrance and the mushroom fields) but the middle part, where you have moved out of your enclave (if you have, at all). However if you don't mind losing a few veteran units your progress will be unhindered (provided you use Malifor's attack and leadership at the right places).

The Epilogue is at least well write and I have in general enjoyed the campaign. I still don't think its that much different to DID but it does place an alternate spin on the same idea.

As for the similarities with DiD I have already commented earlier. Thanks for playing, its good that you enjoyed it.

I mean Lionel the Death knight. When I stepped on his bones with Milfor the even didn't activate. Incidently the Death Knight I got from the troll leader was fairly useless and would have been better directly under my control. I had almost no veterans but was able to keep replacing any lost Wraiths thanks to the large amount of kills

WanderingHero wrote:I mean Lionel the Death knight. When I stepped on his bones with Milfor the even didn't activate.

You will have to move Malifor in any of the 6 hexes adjacent to the bones, not the one with the bones on it. In the next version I will modify this, and make Lionel appear when Malifor steps on the hex with the bones too. At present I am doing some more work on the campaign, which I think will please you all.

This campaign has been extended a bit following requests in this forum. Now it has 14 scenarios, 2 more than in the original plan. It now stops just short of the killing of Khazg Black Tusk, and many of the shortcomings of "Northern Rebirth" has been explained. Version 1.0.2 has been uploaded. Please update your add-ons.
Hope you all enjoy the additions. Enjoy playing "Birth of a Lich".

Is Short Foot Shamblah as aggravating as before? Whats the troll scenario like? I'm not sure I'm in the mood for another long scenario after that.
I was happy with the length of the campaign, but maybe the people who wanted a bit more will be happy.

"Short Foot Shumbha" has been left untouched for now. However there is nothing to worry even if you lose 2 or 3 veteran soldiers here, you can always level up new L1s (even in the last scenario).
"Troll Trouble" can be a bit nasty. Trolls vs undead is always difficult (especially if you don't use spirit units), but the nasty surprise lies somewhere else. But there is a silver lining, you don't have to face trolls anymore in the last scenario.

Please provide your feedback after playing the campaign. And remember that you won't get a really tough scenario (like to "Infested caves" in NR) from me, because I don't upload scenarios which I myself cannot get across!

You aren't in a pressure to complete playing a long scenario in a single sitting, are you?! You can play it in 2 or 3 sittings, so that 60 turns will be reduced to 30-30 or 20-20-20. "Short Foot Shumbha" is definitely long, but still falls short of quite a few scenarios in mainline campaigns. It will be better if people play games to vent their mental stress rather than pressurising themselves into playing as if they have got challenges to win at hand!

How on earth am I supposed to win scenario 4 (Thunedain the Strong)? I can massacre the orcs quickly, no problem, it's actually really easy, but the stupid dwarf in the north just sits there and dies to assassins and wolves. On my first attempt he recruited one ulf, on the second try he didn't recruit at all. On the third he actually tried to recruit, but only when the orcs were right next to him, two ulfs died and orcs took the keep hexes and he bit it again. Am I missing something here? There's no way I can get there fast enough to save him - he dies on turn 4/5.

I did face a bit of this problem myself, but since it was not so serious (Thunedain did not die) I decided to ignore it. The solution is to recruit dwarves and exert pressure on the orcs so that they attack Malifor rather than Thunedain. I am posting a replay.
If you still face the problem please post it here. I will make a change then.

Alright, I finally got it on fifth attempt, but only because the enemy leader didn't send any assassins north AND because this time Thunedain immediately recruited three fighters (and not ulfs!). I don't understand this randomness in AI behaviour though (can't you make it force-recruit or something?). I always iroman Wesnoth campaigns, so I found this rather annoying - the player really has no impact on whether the allied leader lives or dies (perhaps reposition Thunedain's keep, so that the player could at least try to screen him) .
Other than that, I like the campaign a lot so far, just as I liked your previous works. Will give more feedback when I finish the whole thing.

I feel its time I disable recruitment of Dwarvish Ulfserkers by Thunedain. I had merely limited contemporaneous recruit of ulfserkers to 2, and so the ai went to make space for them and didn't spend the gold on anything else! I think with this modification the problem will be solved.
Enjoy playing "Birth of a Lich"!

Spoilers ahead.
Orcish Sovereign - looked like a typical BfW fight, but it was suprisingly fresh and not easy to finish without losses. Very nice.

Last Stand - really enjoyed this one. While it's not difficult as such, the time limit is rather tight, especially if Malifor is far away from the dungeon entrance, when the objectives change. I looked at the status table at the start, so I expected more enemy leaders and it wasn't hard to figure out where they would arrive. Anyway, everything's easy when you have a batallion of dwarven lords. Still, I'd add 2-4 turns to the turn limit on normal.

New Beginning - not much to say about this one, a standard mission, very easy. I overrecruited here, but it can be finished with just a handful of units.

Finding Home - difficulty spikes somewhat at this point, but reasonably so. I lost some leveled adepts here and didn't feel like reloading, which turned out to be a mistake (see below).

Start of Retaliation - good, fast-paced scenario. When I saw the huge orc mob pouring into the cave I thought "oh crap," but I prevailed somehow using mushroom grove hexes and shamelessly abusing spirit units. Was pretty tense.

Short Foot Shumbha - this one was exhausting, but fun, with difficulty set just right. There's A LOT of enemy units and with reinforcements after the main baddie dies it's non-stop action. Great time to level units.

Troll Trouble - oh dear, where do I start? It's one thing to take away dwarven recruits and vets from the player after Last Stand, because it's early enough in the campaign and there's plenty of opportunity to level up new undead units. So I did just that and focused on the spirit line, which is the sensible thing to do when you face waves upon waves of friggin trolls. And then some more trolls. But after Troll Trouble my entire recall list is gone (hell, I'm forced to eliminate them myself, which just adds insult to injury). Now I'm looking at that huge fortress (Nishumbha the Terrible) with like a million lvl2 orcs and all I got are my skeleton and ghoul recruits (oh, and four chocobones, lol). Player should NEVER be punished this way for choosing a particular unit line over another, it's just not fair. It's also extremely harsh, I had around 10 spectres near the end of Troll Trouble, it was my entire lineup, with multiple AMLAs,and suddenly all those units turn hostile. Ridiculous, you cannot plan for something like that and, playing undead, there's really no counter unless the player has a bunch of necros-turned-liches. I felt kinda cheated at this point and don't really feel like finishing the campaign.
Overall (this goes for most scenarios except maybe Last Stand), I feel that enemy leaders should recruit lvl1s from time to time, so that skellies are a more viable alternative. As it is, the player is basically forced to go full adept or ghost line.

As for the story, I enjoyed it for the most part and don't really mind similarities to DiD. There's one thing I found jarring, however, namely Malifor's alignment after becoming a lich. I mean, on the one hand he's a good guy at heart and tries to help the dwarves at every opportunity, but on the other he clearly enjoys murder, happily slaughters everything in his path cackling maniacally, tortures Elinia (!), etc. It just doesn't hang together very well. Either he's evil, or he's not, i.e. either he is the same man he'd been when alive (that's what is supposed to differentiate liches from other undead, right?), or the transformation into an unholy creature has irrreversibly corrupted his soul, in which case he wouldn't care about the affairs of the living. You can't have both. Malifor is like a weird scary kid who brings home stray kittens, feeds them and then dissects them.